[Urbane Guerrilla]

Ozzfest, Day One -- And a Smell of Burning

Did something a bit unusual for me 15 August. I don't hit hardly any concerts, let alone a multi-band heavy-metal bash.

But hey, it was Ozzy.

Two stages, one running a bunch of small local-ish guys, each with their website of course, such as Black Label and California Wildebeest. Couldn't understand a bloody word, of course. A couple got married onstage before Black Label's set.

Back to the main stage for the headliners: Non Point, Devil Driver, Halford, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy. Didn't, of course, recognize or much understand anything before MC did "Girls Girls Girls" for their finale. Which they would hardly dare not to do, of course. So there was plenty of ear-tearing volume, regular whiffs of marijuana come down the breeze, bonfire to the left, another bonfire to the right, so sometimes there was an odor like firecrackers and sometimes one of burning plastic. Moshers while it was still light out, a couple of fights too -- looked like weenie wagging to me. A little blood. A combatant escorted out wiggling a sore jaw. When it got dark and the bonfires stayed lit, the moshery settled down to just capering around the fires in a circle, no slamming.

Multigenerational crowd, too. The youngest one I saw was a girl who looked to be maybe seven or eight. At the other end, graybeards, with their wives, looking, well, establishment, and their twentysomething children with them too. Been a lot of water over the dam since those people had younger folk's clothes. Punk-metal devotees all over the place also, no distinction between the metalheads and the punkers whatsoever. Ozzfests apparently are ecumenical this way.

So, Ozzy Osborne comes on. Most of the crowd is on its feet except the ones too tired or too stoned. Standing or sitting you can hear just fine anyway. Some funny quickie-music-videos with a comedian who can do an OzzFace. A goof on Twilight: Vampire? Vampire?! I'm the fuckin' Prince of fuckin' Darkness! Everybody laughed at the Iron Man one -- predictable, maybe, but quite inevitable. Felt right. Then Ozzy came out in his long Prince of Darkness skinny coat and led off with "Fairies Wear Boots." I sang along. He skipped back and forth across the stage from one side to the other all set long, mixed with a few of his arm-spreads like a cult leader glorying in his cultic adoration... though it quite looked like it was all in fun. He shucked the skinny-coat about two songs in, then hit for the blue bucket upstage left and soaked his head; I guess for Ozzy the Wet-head is Not Dead. Then he soaked the crowd too. He did some post-Sabbath material, then a few Sabbath pieces capped with "Iron Man," featuring what I suppose is the 21st-century concert-mix of the song now, where every verse is rehashed with crowd and Ozzy all singing the melody to "Oo-woo-ooh ooh ooh" all the way through. Carrying on like Everyone's Evil Uncle Ozzy, and this too is in fun. He finished this with "Paranoid," then brought out a Japanese kid whose name I did not catch. Literally, a kid, about nine years old, very successfully wielding a guitar every bit as tall as he was, behind which he could have hidden, with a bit of determination. Much applause for the kid at the end. Lots of rabble-rousing "I can't hear you! I'm not gonna continue until I hear you!!" between songs. Pyro for all of the last three acts. Ozzy squirting the front rows with his special tripod-mounted Really Super Soaker, alternating with more sloshes with a big bucket of water, though the heat of the day was by now long past.

Getting out of the parking lot at the San Manuel Amphitheater was a lot more tedious than going in.